Geoff Ibbott, director of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, a key competitor of K&S, said under cross-examination that his lab’s business has increased since K&S’ 2009 lawsuit seeking injunctive relief against its accreditation organization, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine.

K&S lost its accreditation in 2009 after the radiation calibration consulting lab’s merger with a foreign company, PTW-Freiburg of Germany, which is also a medical equipment manufacturer. The accreditation panel said it feared a potential conflict of interest when an equipment company faced calibration testing by its subsidiary.

Ibbott, an expert in radiation, said that the increase in his lab’s business is due to the legal issues involving accreditation of K&S, one of its only two competitors. The other is the University of Wisconsin’s lab.

The three accredited labs calibrate a line of commercial products known as “dosimetry” equipment, which is designed to measure the amount of absorbed radiation in body tissue during the course of radiation therapy, primarily in patient cancer treatment.

“Mathematically you need at least three labs,” said Malcolm McEwen, former co-chairman of the AAPM’s accreditation subcommittee, in his testimony about the balance of the three accredited labs. “Three works, four’s a bit of robustness.”

In spring 2009, the University of Wisconsin and M.D. Anderson filed letters of protest referencing the potential “conflict-of-interest” in K&S’s merger. To ease tensions among the three competitors, a “roundtable meeting” was convened at the AAPM’s annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., on July 25, 2009. Afterward, the voting members of the sub-committee voted 8-1 against the re-accreditation of K&S. The only vote in favor of K&S came from McEwen, who attended both the surveillance and site visits to K&S as part of the AAPM’s accreditation.

K&S has retained its accreditation, which it had held for 27 years without a negative event, through a restraining order pending completion of a trial and a decision by Judge Kevin Sharp.